and give him a perpetual high. Fine. So I had another whisky while Cosmic stretched himself out on the floor. I offered to hoover, so that the place might be a bit closer to operating-theatre standards of cleanliness, but Cosmic was in a hurry to be high. I plunged the spike down onto his skull. First time round I could not bring myself to stab down hard enough. So I had another go and this time the spike went in a tiny bit and I started to turn the hand-drill. Blood was spurting out all over the place and Cosmic was whimpering a bit when I fainted and the whole thing had to be abandoned. Not a memory to dwell on.
Having written the above, I put my biro down and, closing my eyes, I concentrated on counting backwards from 1,000, in case any other gruesome memories were queuing up to be recalled.
Enough of these unpleasant digressions. I escaped my parents as soon as I could and, on the pretext of looking for some sociology textbooks, I walked into town. Just as I was about to enter Heffers Bookshop, I belatedly noticed the tune which had been playing in my head. It was ‘Strange Brew’ by the Cream – ‘Strange brew killing what’s inside of you’. I shook my head to clear it of this sinister music. On the way back to the house, I collected a shopping list’s worth of food and, as I paid for the food, I noticed that the tune was still with me, like a familiar dogging my steps. As I envisage it, such fragmentary silent tunes and lyrics inhabit the ether, like larvae from the world of the dead. They want to communicate, but they are not all there and they are not quite sure what it is that they want to communicate.
In the afternoon Dad went off to a football match. He never used to be so keen. He must have been desperate to get out of the house. I am left alone with Mum. She obviously wanted to resume her interrogation about my unsuitable life in London. But this deathly interrogation was interrupted by the phone ringing.
Sally and I are a number once more! She was ringing to make things up. The telephone was in the living room where Mum was sitting, so all Sally’s tenderness and passionate remorse had to be met by calculatedly downbeat, monosyllabic responses from me. Fortunately she swiftly twigged. We have agreed to meet on Monday. Sally says that she is, after all, prepared to share me with the Lodge.
‘I suppose it’s part of you and I love all of you.’
Then I am alone with my mother. The sickness and the treatment, working together, have turned her into a witch with straggling locks and cadaverous cheeks. Every time she opens her mouth to speak there is an exhalation of foul air. Surely I am too young to have a dying parent? I paced about the room filled with a mad anger at Mum’s weakness. Soon after I first met him, Felton showed me a passage in a book by the seventeenth-century divine, Joseph Glanvill: ‘And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigour? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death, utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.’
At length – God it was long – Dad returned from the football, like a prisoner who has just finished a brief outing on parole. At dinner we talked politics – the LSE sit-in, the Greek colonels’ coup, the Vietnam War. We are not really interested in these things, but we have nothing else to talk about. Mum and Dad have no interest in rock music, occultism or sociology. Indeed, they actively dislike these things. There is only one topic which obsesses the three of us and we do not talk about that.
Sunday, May 28
Sunday is like Saturday only more so. It is like as if it is the same day with only the name changed. There was a thick morning fog. It seemed to be prowling round the house looking for a way in. I tried to read Marcuse and all his stuff about civilization’s repressive, monogamic
Having written the above, I put my biro down and, closing my eyes, I concentrated on counting backwards from 1,000, in case any other gruesome memories were queuing up to be recalled.
Enough of these unpleasant digressions. I escaped my parents as soon as I could and, on the pretext of looking for some sociology textbooks, I walked into town. Just as I was about to enter Heffers Bookshop, I belatedly noticed the tune which had been playing in my head. It was ‘Strange Brew’ by the Cream – ‘Strange brew killing what’s inside of you’. I shook my head to clear it of this sinister music. On the way back to the house, I collected a shopping list’s worth of food and, as I paid for the food, I noticed that the tune was still with me, like a familiar dogging my steps. As I envisage it, such fragmentary silent tunes and lyrics inhabit the ether, like larvae from the world of the dead. They want to communicate, but they are not all there and they are not quite sure what it is that they want to communicate.
In the afternoon Dad went off to a football match. He never used to be so keen. He must have been desperate to get out of the house. I am left alone with Mum. She obviously wanted to resume her interrogation about my unsuitable life in London. But this deathly interrogation was interrupted by the phone ringing.
Sally and I are a number once more! She was ringing to make things up. The telephone was in the living room where Mum was sitting, so all Sally’s tenderness and passionate remorse had to be met by calculatedly downbeat, monosyllabic responses from me. Fortunately she swiftly twigged. We have agreed to meet on Monday. Sally says that she is, after all, prepared to share me with the Lodge.
‘I suppose it’s part of you and I love all of you.’
Then I am alone with my mother. The sickness and the treatment, working together, have turned her into a witch with straggling locks and cadaverous cheeks. Every time she opens her mouth to speak there is an exhalation of foul air. Surely I am too young to have a dying parent? I paced about the room filled with a mad anger at Mum’s weakness. Soon after I first met him, Felton showed me a passage in a book by the seventeenth-century divine, Joseph Glanvill: ‘And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigour? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death, utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.’
At length – God it was long – Dad returned from the football, like a prisoner who has just finished a brief outing on parole. At dinner we talked politics – the LSE sit-in, the Greek colonels’ coup, the Vietnam War. We are not really interested in these things, but we have nothing else to talk about. Mum and Dad have no interest in rock music, occultism or sociology. Indeed, they actively dislike these things. There is only one topic which obsesses the three of us and we do not talk about that.
Sunday, May 28
Sunday is like Saturday only more so. It is like as if it is the same day with only the name changed. There was a thick morning fog. It seemed to be prowling round the house looking for a way in. I tried to read Marcuse and all his stuff about civilization’s repressive, monogamic
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